


puzzle pieces

by helsinkibaby



Series: The District Dating Scene [1]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Het, Romance, Season 14 Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 12:32:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15685500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: The things about Nick Torres is that he's a puzzle waiting to be solved. Ellie has always liked puzzles.





	puzzle pieces

**Author's Note:**

> So I ended up writing a fic where I rewrote the season 14 Thanksgiving episode so that Nick was the secret boyfriend instead of Qasim. Then I figured I should really write the fic where he became the secret boyfriend instead of Qasim. And here we are.

Ellie doesn’t quite know what to make of Nick Torres when she first meets him.

Sure, from the way Quinn describes him, he sounds like a sociopath, a textbook case almost. But when she meets him, she figures out that that’s not the case. Sociopaths don’t care about anyone or anything but themselves; Nick obviously loves his family, is sick at the chaos and destruction that his jobs has brought into their lives. He cares about his sister, his niece, and she thinks he even cares about Elena Silva - which is another thing that makes her wonder about Nick Torres. How much of Miguel was real and how much was Nick? Who is the real Nick Torres and does he even know himself after so long undercover?

He's a mystery to her, a puzzle, and Ellie has always loved puzzles.

So without even realising she's doing it, she finds herself noting details about him, filing them away for future reference, future thought. Like the picture on his desk of a younger him, "something I like to be reminded of," he'd told her. Or the time when he'd said that she'd have to fill him in on the "District Dating Scene" and she'd only wondered if he was flirting with her when she'd told him it wasn't really her style and she'd seen a flash of something that looked like disappointment hastily covered up in his eyes.

"You ever been married?" she'd asked him in that same conversation and he'd said, "Not really," two words that left her with more questions than they answered and she'd been in a tailspin for days trying to parse it out.

She wonders sometimes if he meant that to happen.

Sometimes she thinks he definitely did. Like he knows what she’s doing and he keeps on dropping breadcrumbs just to keep her interest.

But it’s the times when he doesn’t mean to do it that she learns the most.

Like when she’s sitting across a dinner table from him in the middle of Ohio, listening to him charm Victor Medina’s mother, mere hours before they have to turn her son over to ICE for deportation. Nick is sitting at the table like he’s lived there half his life, is showing no signs of ever wanting to leave and considering Ellie had had to fight tooth and nail and purposely bad singing to get him to go along with getting there in the first place, she thinks she’s allowed to be a little confused. She’s even more confused when, on the way back to Washington, they stop at a bar where Nick lets Medina have his cell phone, offers to buy him a drink. She asks him about it - she can’t leave a mystery alone after all - and his answer floors her. “I got to know him. I looked at his mother’s face,” he says and she can see the pain and frustration he’s feeling written all over his face. “I have friends like him, family like him. I could’ve been him.”

She wants to say that that’s impossible, that that would never happen to him. But she’s heard Victor talk about how he ended up this way, she knows it could happen so easily to anyone. Besides, even if she didn’t, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. From the tone of Nick’s voice, from the look in his eyes, he believes it and that’s enough.

Whatever she’s about to say takes a backseat when a gunman bursts into the bar, taking aim at Victor. A chase ensues and she ends up saving Nick’s life with a well timed and excellently executed shot.

She pretends she doesn’t see the admiration in his eyes but the whole way back to DC it’s all she can think about.

*

She’s still thinking about it hours later, after a mind numbing day of sitting at her desk doing paperwork on the Medina case. It’s the type of day where she can’t believe she used to sit at a desk all day (or yes, ok, the occasional floor) when she used to work for the NSA, the kind of day that Nick usually complains about every half hour on the half hour.

But today Nick’s been curiously quiet.

He’s so quiet she keeps on glancing over at him to check that he’s still there and hasn’t actually left the building without her noticing. But he’s still there, just lost in his own world, so lost that he doesn’t even notice her watching him. She knows that because there’s no quip about her checking him out, admiring his body or any of the dozen "about to get you into trouble for sexual harassment" comments she might expect from him.

She doesn’t like this Nick.

She surprises herself, as well as him, when it’s past the end of shift and she shuts down her computer, stands up and, upon noticing that they’re the last two in their section she says, “Hey, Torres.” He looks up, eyes darker than usual and she continues without thinking. “You want to get a drink?”

Surprise lightens his eyes and a low wattage smile brightens his face but the quip she was expecting never comes. Instead she gets “Bishop, I thought you’d never ask,” and it sounds like he means it.

Something twists in her stomach and she can’t tell if it’s a good twist or not.

She’ll just have to chalk that up to another mystery to solve.

*

He picks the bar and she’s expecting one of the places near the Navy Yard or one of their favoured haunts downtown. Instead, he brings her to a place that can only be described as a dive bar, all dark wood and faded prints of sports stars on the wall and when they walk in, the Zac Brown Band is blaring from the jukebox.

Ellie loves it.

“I hope this place is classy enough for you,” Nick deadpans when they’re sitting across from one another with a beer in front of each of them.

“I love it,” she says, tilting her head as the song changes and Luke Bryan starts singing about not wanting the night to end. “I’m surprised you do, though.”

“Believe me, Bishop, no-one is as surprised as I am,” he tells her. “But I’ve been exploring the city the last couple months, trying to find places that I like... not Miguel, not Enrique, not any of the aliases I’ve had over the last eight years... I walked in here and it is the last place I thought I’d feel comfortable and yet...” He spreads his hands wide. “Maybe there’s a cowboy in me, just waiting to come out.” He tilts his head to the side like he’s considering it and she is in no way picturing him astride a horse on her parents’ farm. Not at all. “Then again, I’m not crazy about horses so maybe not.” 

“That would be an impediment,” she allows, trying to get the image out of her head. It proves harder than she would have thought and she suddenly has deeper sympathy for Alex and her discomfort over her dream about Gibbs. Of course, there is a difference - Alex’s dream about Gibbs had freaked her out. But when Ellie thinks of Nick visiting her family home, she wants to smile. 

Maybe it's contagious because a smile is lighting Nick's eyes too and it's almost like the stresses of the last couple of days have disappeared. "How long have you been working with Gibbs and his crew?" he asks her and she doesn't have to think too long about it, the numbers coming to her easily. She ends up telling him the whole story of how she'd helped them out while at the NSA, how Gibbs had taken her on as a Probie shortly after. She embellishes a few of the details of the case, mostly at her own expense, just to see if she can make him laugh, and he follows up with a tale of his own about being undercover and almost being made. The conversation turns into the two of them trading tales about their time at NCIS, moving backwards in time to college and high school and childhood and when he buys the second beer - she'd bought the first, he tells her that turnabout is fair play - she's more relaxed than she's been in weeks. 

Well, that's not really true, she reminds herself. She and Clayton Reeves had spent more than one Scottish summer night staying up until the wee small hours of the morning, putting the world to rights. This was the same, right? Two friends enjoying a night out together? 

But somehow, it doesn't feel the same. 

“So, Oklahoma.” There's a question in his voice and she knows she startles when he speaks, knows she's spent too long lost in her own thoughts. “Plenty of cowboys there?” His eyes dance in the dim light of the bar and once again she pictures the two of them on her parents' farm, laughing and smiling just like they are now. 

“You looking for lessons?” she teases, happy with her quick recovery, and he shrugs, a grin turning up his own lips. “Well, I did grow up on a farm... but mostly crop farming. Not too many horses, and definitely no cowboys.” She gives him what she hopes is a casually sympathetic look. “Guess you’ll have to keep on being an NCIS agent.” 

Just like that, the shutters come down on his face, just like they had been all day and it's all the more jarring considering the conversations they've just had. "Yeah." He heaves a sigh that could threaten to knock her down. She doesn't say anything, waits for him to speak and when he does, there's the same look in his eyes that was there in the other bar. "It was different this time," he tells her eventually. "With Medina. Connecting with him." 

Ellie frowns, because she's heard Nick on the subject of being undercover, how success or failure often came down to forming some kind of connection with the people on the inside. Nick must sense her confusion because he continues, "I've spent the last eight years connecting to people as Miguel or Rick or Pedro... sixteen different names, different stories, different personalities... but never as me. Never as Nick Torres."

His words from the bar ring in her ears and she understands them even better now, understands how this case affected Nick, and why. "But with Victor Medina... it was all you." No cover stories, no mission, no lies. Just Nick, for the first time in eight years, with nothing to buffer any feelings that might come up, any emotions that might be stirred. 

The thought sends her into a tailspin; she can't imagine what it must be like for him. 

She's trying to figure that out when he speaks, shaking his head. "I'm not sure I'm cut out for this, Bishop." 

The words chill her to her bones, freeze her in her seat and at first she's not sure why. Then she realises - it's the thought of not being able to work with Nick any more. Not being able to look up and see his face at the other side of the bullpen, not being able to hear his little asides, even if those little verbal jabs are sometimes lobbed in her direction. Not being able to get to the bottom of the puzzle that is Nick Torres - no, she doesn't like that idea at all. 

"I think you're wrong," she tells him. Her voice is quiet and he has to lean across the table to hear her properly. His eyes are trained on her face, like she's the only thing that exists in his orbit. She feels the same way about him right now. "I think you're exactly where you should be. Exactly where you need to be."

He lifts an eyebrow. "In a bar with a co-worker?"

She doesn't blink. "With a friend." 

"A friend." Nick rolls the word around in his mouth, like he's trying it on for size. "Is that what we are?" 

There's something different in his face, something hooded, guarded. Careful, is the word she's looking for, Ellie decides. It makes something twist in her stomach and the line between pleasant and not is decidedly thin. "Aren't we?" 

It's a weak parry and she knows it. His eyebrows draw in but only for a moment and she can see the exact second when he decides to throw caution to the wind and say what he has to say. "I meant," he continues, reaching across the table and covering her hand with his, "is that all we are?" 

Ellie is a logical person. She knows that Nick is her team mate, her colleague. She knows that Rule Twelve exists for a reason, knows that even if it didn't, and even if it's not actually enforceable as an NCIS rule, that dating someone you work with is a bad idea. She ignores the little voice in her head that points out that she and Jake managed just fine when they were working together; it had been when she left NSA that things had begun to go south. This is a different situation - she works more closely with Nick that she ever had with Jake, and besides, they are two completely different types of man. Nick is nothing like Jake, never could be. 

Besides, she's not the woman she was then either. 

Maybe that's why she inclines her head. "Yes," she says and disappointment sears across his face, hastily shuttered. Then, slowly, she moves her hand under his, turns hers palm up and laces their fingers together. "For now." 

The smile on his face - open and joyous and unguarded - is one of the best things she's ever seen. 

*

He walks her back to her car when they finish their second beer and it's just like it always is except for his hand is warm in hers and his shoulder brushes against hers with every step. 

Words temporarily fail her when they actually reach the car and she bites her lip as she turns to face him. There's the tiniest of grins playing around his lips and her eyes flutter shut as he reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "Goodnight, Ellie," he says softly and she blinks in confusion because she hadn't expected to hear those words from him. What she's feeling must be written all over her face because he chuckles softly, answers a question she hadn't even asked. "Oh, I want to. Believe me. I just... I want to take this slow, Ellie. I don't want to screw this up." 

A laugh of happiness and relief bubbles up in her throat and she finds herself smiling at the contradiction of a man who has no problem rushing headlong into things, a man who lives by his instincts, yet who’s romantic enough to want to take things slowly. Or maybe one who knows that that’s what she wants, even if the way he’s looking at her is threatening to make her forget that. It’s another piece of the puzzle that is Nick Torres, she thinks, and the knowledge that he’s letting her in, letting her see all the different sides to him, fizzes through her like electricity. “OK." 

"Of course..." He takes a step closer to her, uses their joined hands to pull her closer to him. "A goodnight kiss wouldn't be taking it too fast, would it?" 

She barely gets a chance to shake her head before he's bringing his lips to hers. The kiss is soft, tender and sweet and Ellie would almost say it's chaste except for the fact that she feels it all the way down to her toes. When he draws back, his pupils are blown wide, turning his eyes almost black. Ellie doesn't think it has anything to do with how dark it is right now. 

Grinning, she bites her lip, reaches up and lays her hand on his cheek. "Goodnight, Nick," she whispers, giving him one more quick kiss before getting into her car and driving away. 

She can see him in her rear-view mirror, watching her until she drives out of sight. 

*

Slow and steady lasts approximately forty-eight hours, which Ellie swears are the longest forty-eight of her life. 

But later, when Nick’s body is wrapped around hers like they’re two pieces of a puzzle fitting together effortlessly, his lips light against hers, his touch still heavy on her skin, she knows she still hasn’t come close to learning all his secrets. 

That’s ok though. 

She has all the time in the world to figure him out.


End file.
